SOCIETY REGISTRATION IS NOT A LAND-GRAB TARGET, RULES BOMBAY HC

On July 2, the Bombay High Court dismissed Writ Petition No. 7855 of 2026 filed by Elite Diagnostic Centre Pvt. Ltd. against Krishna Kunj Co-operative Housing Society, Santacruz (West) — a society registered on March 23, 1981. The company had challenged the Co-operation Minister's order of May 6, 2026, which restored the society's registration after a Divisional Joint Registrar had de-registered it in September 2024. Justice Sandeep V. Marne upheld the Minister: the power to de-register under Section 21A of the MCS Act, 1960 is a narrow one, exercisable only where registration was secured through deliberate misrepresentation in the information supplied at the time of registration itself — misrepresentation of such degree that, without it, the society would not have been registered. The judgment opens by recording what it calls a rather unusual circumstance: the petitioner-company's director is himself a member of the society — first through a flat, now through a garage he still owns — has served as its office bearer, and stood impleaded as a respondent in his own company's petition. The company argued garage owners cannot be members; its director holds his membership through a garage. The petitioner had pointed to later developments — the title dispute, allegations of illegal construction, and the 2014 rejection of the society's deemed conveyance application — as grounds to unwind the 1981 registration. The court rejected that approach entirely: misrepresentation must be found in the registration proposal itself and cannot be assumed from events occurring after registration. The court also rejected the argument that garage purchasers inflated the member count: the registration proposal had openly disclosed six flats and four garages, and an authority's error of judgment in accepting garage occupiers as eligible members under Section 6 is not the applicants' misrepresentation. Most significantly, the court expressly held that the petitioner's real motive was "securing title in respect of the land" — a dispute that cannot be adjudicated in de-registration proceedings, nor can those proceedings be misused for that veiled objective. For old societies in Mira-Bhayandar, Thane and the suburbs — many of which face rival title claimants precisely when redevelopment negotiations begin — the ruling substantially weakens a pressure tactic that has circulated for years: the threat that a society's very registration can be attacked to force it to the table. Full analysis of Section 21A and what societies under similar threat should do appears on Page 2.

सांताक्रूझ येथील ४५ वर्षे जुन्या कृष्ण कुंज सहकारी गृहनिर्माण संस्थेची नोंदणी रद्द करण्याची मागणी करणारी याचिका मुंबई उच्च न्यायालयाने फेटाळून लावली. न्यायमूर्ती संदीप मार्णे यांनी स्पष्ट केले — महाराष्ट्र सहकारी संस्था अधिनियमाच्या कलम २१अ अंतर्गत नोंदणी रद्द करण्याचा अधिकार अत्यंत मर्यादित आहे. नोंदणीच्या वेळी जाणीवपूर्वक खोटी माहिती दिली असेल, तरच हा अधिकार वापरता येतो. जमिनीचा वाद, बेकायदा बांधकामाचे आरोप किंवा मानीव अभिहस्तांतरण अर्ज फेटाळला जाणे — या नंतरच्या घडामोडी नोंदणीतील फसवणूक ठरू शकत नाहीत, असे न्यायालयाने बजावले. गॅरेजधारकांना सभासद धरल्याचा आक्षेपही फेटाळला — मूळ प्रस्तावातच सहा सदनिका व चार गॅरेज उघडपणे नमूद होते. याचिकाकर्त्याचा खरा हेतू जमिनीचा ताबा मिळवणे हाच होता, हे न्यायालयाने स्पष्ट नोंदवले. जमिनीचा वाद जमिनीच्याच न्यायालयीन प्रक्रियेत लढावा — नोंदणी रद्द करण्याच्या मार्गाने नव्हे. पुनर्विकासाच्या वाटाघाटीत जुन्या सोसायट्यांवर दबाव आणण्याचे एक हत्यार या निर्णयाने कायमचे निकामी झाले आहे. मिरा-भाईंदर व ठाणे परिसरातील शेकडो जुन्या संस्थांना हा मोठा दिलासा आहे. सविस्तर विश्लेषण पान २ वर.